Two Lakes, One Winter...

...by the shore of the lake there were some ice sculptures.

And by the small lake Munksjön in town by the pier. A forever sleeping seagull on the edge. A tree painting in the ice and finally a tree full of dummies.

High-lights of 2012...

...must've been to see Jens Lekman perform in Gothenburg in May. Or get near perfect sight after the eye laser operation in July. Or to meet all friends again at the beginning of the semester after one year off uni. Or maybe when I visited Isabelle in Prague in the chilly autumn days. Or just maybe that Thursday that became absolutely great when Swedish House Mafia played in Stockholm. 

And I managed to keep my New Year promises for 2012 (!).

In The End Of 2012...

So, after a long waiting Christmas finally came and was as expected. Lots of tasty things on the "julbord" and great time with my relatives. Almost all of my Christmas gifts that I gave away were related to food in some way such gas burner for caramellisation, a giant papaya and vanilla from Madagascar. 

 A few days after Christmas me and my sister went to see The Hobbit in 3D. The movie was good, I love the scenery in Fylke. I should read the book some day. 

And then the last day of the year came. I celebrated the new year at J. place with dear friends and a delicious three course supper. Just before the clock struck twelve we went to a gazebo, opened the bottle of bubble and saw fireworks and lanterns not very high above us. Happy new 2013!

Don't Forget Our Twittering Friends...

...I hung up some tallow balls today. It's cold outside, but at least the small birds don't have to starve.

The Winter Solstice Festival

Yesterday was the longest winter solstice and also the longest night of the year. The winter solstice is celebrated by Southeast Asian people it's called 冬至 (Dong Zhi) and is one of the biggest festivals. There are different traditions in different countries.

However, we celebrated at my grandparents where we lightened incense to reminiscens our ancestors and then ate some chinese food. We also had 湯圓 for dessert which is traditional glutinous rice balls in sweet soup. It's said that each time you eat rice balls you one year older. The big ones is stuffed with sweet mungbean filling.

Gingerbread Baking in the Making...

I invited my younger cousins to bake gingerbread a few days ago. We made some animals-shaped cookies like horses, mooses, pigs and camels. It was fun and they're just too sweet.

Instead of Christmas Tree...

...a shooting star, disco ball, tomtenissar, and candles of course.

No More School...

... for this year, I should add. So, last week was all about to finish all the assessments, home exam, lab reports (often simultaneously with lots of fika :P) etc etc and yesterday I had my final exam in biostatistics. I love the feeling to step out of the exam room and take the first deep breath in, knowing that I've tried my best and that I cannot do anything more. Winter holiday, yay!

 

So sweet of my friend E. to give all of us a giant "skumtomte" keep up the study mode.

Surprise in the Letterbox...

... after spending unhealthy much time in school lately, I found this very sweet Christmas card with a Taiwanese stamp from G. today. This made my day!

Statistics&Chocolate Muffins...

...One must just love statistics when it involves chocolate muffins. Me and E. were supposed to design a 2³ experiment and decided to bake muffins with three different factors at two levels and then measure the height of them. We chose the factors temperatures, time and with or without baking powder. The results...

...were yummy!

Mini-christmas-mania...

On Friday me and a couple of friends went to spex, which is interactive student theater combined with song and dance. They were so good and there was much laughter.

pic source: student.liu.se

On Saturday I put up some christmas decorations and baked some "lussekatter". I sort of failed baking that (and I normally consider myself as a pretty good baker). The funny thing is that I know all you need to know about yeasts (I take a course in Industrial Biotechnology) or should I say Saccharomyces cerevisae, what temperature is optimal and what substrate they like and so on. Of course I forgot to heat the milk and the dough took forever to rise. Gah.

Me and E went to the Christmas fair in Gamla Linköping on the first advent. So nice to just strolling around in the old town. 

pic source: linkoping.se

Well, as you've maybe noticed, I've gotten some Christmas-mania. I love Christmas, but the few weeks before is almost even better like take a walk in the snowy landscape or baking with christmas music in the background or just count down the days left. I can't wait for the my winter holiday to come! 

Candles&Tea

It's dark outside nowadays here in Sweden, despite the snow that covers the ground. The night is getting longer and longer, while the sun rise later for each day that passes. However, I like this time of the year anyway, it's perfect for lighting candles and drink huge cups of tea.

 I think I'm on my way to build a tea-library. My favourite so far is rooibos-cinnamon tea.    

At the end the big parties at uni they always play the song Stad i ljus (eng. City in light) with Tommy Körberg singing. This is a beautiful song about the thirst for living life every day, and so till the end look back and remember the moments shared with the special people in one's life.      

There's a Christmas version of Stad i ljus, it's with the same melody but different lyrics, and it's called Sprid ditt ljus (eng. Spread your light).

Frog Clones and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells...

So yesterday I went to a lecture at uni about the Noble Prize in Medicine or Physiology 2012 where Gurdon and Yamanaka are award winners. It is very interesting with reprogrammed stem cells which totally blow up the earlier dogma that differentiated cells are irreversible. I'll write an article about this in my Cell growth and cell differentiation course, so I'll tell more when I've made some research. 

pic source: http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/genetic/cloning2.htm

Swedish House Mafia...

...in Stockholm last week was the party of the year, no doubts about it! The gig was tight, there were cool projections, lots of dance and sing along. I liked Don't you worry child and also the explosive ending the best.

Prague Trip

Isabells is studying in Prague and I seized the first oppurtunity to pay her a visit after the exam period  in October. I may have said this before, but I really like the atmosphere at airports. All the excitement and expectations mixed with the typical souvenirs...

 It was lovely to meet Isabelle and catch up while drinking hot juice with spices...

The days were filled with second-hand-marathon, sight-seeing like the Old Town and Charles Bridge...

...and waiting the Astronomy clock to ring at sharp. The most absurd 30 seconds or so ever.

Prague is a beautiful and charming city with all the old buildings decorated deluxe, trams and dressed in autumn leaves. However, it started to snow on the third day I was there so I could see both fall-Prague and winter-Prague.

 I could've renamed the city to The City of Cobblestone, there really are cobblestones everywhere...

We also visited a contemporary arts museum, a Czech bar and took a walk in a park with this inviting and somewhat fantasy like entry...

 ...and inside there were peacocks strolling around by high hedges. I really liked this place.

We also went shopping at the shopping center Palladium. Guess what? They had bubble tea! I got a major Taiwan-flashback and just had to have a passion fruit tea with pearls. Delicious!

We also tried a nice vegetarian restaurant with food inspired by the Mediterrean and Middle East. To dessert we had nothing less than fondue au chocolate with fruits...

The trip included everything and overtop my high expections. 

The Autumn Days...

The many walks in the woods often meant a search for chantarelle too. Few things are so amusing as finding bright yellow chantarelles. And few things are as good as sauce made with chantarelle and cream... 

Mid-Autumn festival was celebrated with traditional cakes. The pastries are very sweet and filled beans and nuts. I remember last year when I still was in Taipei, our teacher in Chinese gave us cakes in class.

Going back to uni was great, to meet all friends again and start new interesting courses. I took Genome  Analysis and The Biogas Process. In the latter, we made own biogas in lab scale reactors. That was kind of cool. And smelly.

This summer...

Most of the spring and summer was all about work, work, work. But there were some highlights such as the annual festival Popadelica in the beginning of May. This was the fourth year I visited Popadelica and it was great as usual with good bands, sunshine and mega-swings in the threes. One of the best artists was Alice B. 

 May was a nice month, seen from a musical point of view. The second big music experience was Knarrholmen, a small festival that takes place in the Swedish archipelago on the west coast. Talking about a perfect combination, surrounded by the ocean, morning plunge and  awesome music. Before the festival ended, me and Isabelle agreed that we had to go back next year.

Icona Pop and Säkert (below) were some of the amazing bands. Other memorable things were Jens Lekman (I longed forever to see him), Samtidigt som and the craziest bingo ever . 

The longest day of the year, Midsummer, was spent in Linköping with good friends and contained laughter, good food, games and dance the whole night. 

July was a special time in my life. After years of consideration I finally took the step to get rid of my bad sight with eye laser. Good bye to glasses, foggy glasses on winterdays, lenses and so on. It's a privilege to see the clock when I wake in the morning and to be able to wear sunglasses without wearing lenses. It has been some pair of glasses through the years, but most of them have been donated to charity.  

The rest of the summer was filled with some more work, but also lazy days with fika outside, picking blueberries, raspberry and strawberry. One year off uni had come to an end I just wanted enjoy the last days before school began again in August.  

Reunion & Blog comeback

So I met up with S and L (the girls I used to hang out with in Taipei) this week for a reunion dinner. We went to a mongolian buffet and it was so nice and kind of nostalgic feeling to eat and chat again. There's so much to talk about when you have things in common, all the experiences and memories that we share.

This made me think back to the time in Taiwan last year. And to my help I returned here, to my dear blog to remember, because obviously my working memory is not the best. I had almost forgotten how it was to be there, the many places I've visited and how it felt. But reading the lines I wrote at that time the memories flood back, making me both happy and melancholic. And most of all it made me really miss Taiwan and my friends over there. I cannot believe it's been almost exactly one year since I returned back to Sweden.

What I also realized is that I miss blogging, to write about tiny stuff or major events. So I'll try to summarize what I've been up to from my busy spring and summer and my restart at uni in the fall and after that I'll try to continue to write.

I really like this picture, the first picture of G, me, Hs and H taken in Taiwan.